Changing Customer Behavior is Tricky

A big part of long-term small fly control and prevention is getting customers to cooperate, whether that’s fixing existing sanitation issues where small flies breed or changing their behaviors to minimize these conditions going forward.

Often, support from clients is mixed. According to the 2023 PCT State of the Small Fly Control Market survey, 59 percent of PMPs said their clients were willing to adjust or improve sanitation practices based on their recommendations. At the same time, 65 percent said customers expected the pest control company to solve the small fly problem without additional involvement on their part.

Sometimes clients try to improve sanitation practices when, in fact, these efforts make the small fly problems worse.

This is especially true in commercial kitchens. “One of the things that is making small fly control even harder these days is the fact that everybody and their brother is using pressure washers” to clean, said Marcus Rezende, training director, Truly Nolen International, Orlando, Fla.

“They pressure wash the entire floor, the equipment, and this just helps push a lot of organic debris into cracks and crevices and voids,” he explained. Moisture also gets trapped. As a result, “now you can find dozens of breeding sites for these small flies in a commercial kitchen. Sometimes they’re really hard to pinpoint,” said Rezende.

Adam Woodard, J&J Exterminating, has experienced this as well. “We try to explain why that’s not a good practice. Unfortunately, some of them hire third-party cleaning companies to come in and do that and that is just their procedure for cleaning,” he said.

The difficult part is getting the customer to understand that this practice is creating “a perfect environment for fruit flies to multiply in huge numbers,” said Woodard.

According to a spokesperson at ISSA, a trade association for the worldwide cleaning industry, power washing in commercial kitchens may be done during restorative or deep cleaning, but typically it is not an everyday practice.

Even so, Bob Gaul, Thomas Pest Services, finds some restaurants no longer mop kitchen floors. Instead, they use a hose and squeegee to push organic debris down into the floor drains, which increases the likelihood of small fly problems.

To eliminate the drain gunk in which small flies breed, he has soaked drain caps, scrubbed out drains with brushes and used steam cleaning machines to loosen up thick layers of decaying material coating the drains. Other PMPs suggest that clients hire a licensed plumbing company to hydro jet the drains.

Client education remains essential. Only 42 percent of PMPs said their clients understand how small flies get introduced and established in their homes and businesses, found the survey.